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SoloSkills for a New Economy

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Sales are a matter of building trust and starts by establishing mutual respect. If you can follow my lead and create a website for your consulting business that is an example of using Office365, then you have the right to approach small businesses in your community and offer to help them understand how to use it to benefit their business development.
 
After that, it is a systemic process, just like any other. You break out the activities into separate action plans. Use Results, Steps, Standards to describe those activities and then set up a way of tracking your results and experimenting with different methods until you find the ones that work the best for you.
 
A typical sales process begins with acquiring a list of potential customers (phone book?) and then some strategy of initial contact. This might include cold calls, mailings, e-mailings, flyers, postings at local stores, or more conventional advertising methods. You can even just walk into the businesses in your area and talk to the owners directly.
 
You want to employ a system for each of these methods and begin to understand your success, or conversion rate.
 
The second step, face-to-face, is to perform a needs analysis with the customer, really listen to what they are telling you and take a lot of notes. One of the things you ultimately are selling them, is someone to talk to, and you're providing a sample of that service in your sales process, so be genuine and care about what their problems are.
 
The third stop is to come back with your proposal on how you can help them and close the deal.
 
You don't have to know how to do everything that your small business client needs. You can be the person who goes out into the community and finds the best person to print their flyers or create their database. Over time you will establish relationships with a lot of other independent workers in your community and you can subcontract them to help you with your clients. Eventually, you might form project teams of independent consultants who are able to solve problems more efficiently than larger consulting firms. By staying independent, you can avoid the problems small business owners face.